A Letter From The Publisher, Oct. 9, 1978

The starkly empty red shoes on the cover of this week's TIME were those
of Pope John Paul I, who died so suddenly last week and brought crisis
once again to the Roman Catholic Church. Our cover story is TIME'S 15th
on the papacy, a series that began on June 16,1924, with Pope Pius XI.

Covering religion in depth has been a special charge of TIME since the
magazine began in 1923 and Co-Founder Henry Luce wrote that religious
currents were "more important perhaps than Farm Blocs or youthful
novelists, [and] are lost sight of by the reader of the daily...